Neil deGrasse Tyson explains "How do batteries work?"

General Discussion
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In this 15-minute YouTube Video, “Star Talk,” Neil and comic co-host Chuck Nice explore the positives and negatives of electricity, batteries, and ways to help lower emissions in the fight against climate change.

Chevy sponsored the video so they get to put an advertisement right in the middle that you can skip if you are not interested in the new Chevy Bolt…

I do not always agree with Neil’s views, but I respect everything he has to say because I know they are well thought out. However; Neil, the “Space Elevator” cannot work. The weight of the “cable” connecting the geosynchronous orbiting space station to the equator would weigh so much that the space station could never get supplied enough fuel to power the engines that it would need to continuously fire to support the weight of the cable…

But I digress, back to EV Batteries and the video…

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Imagine a space station/satellite in geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles up. Now run a cable a mile toward Earth and a second cable a mile away from Earth. The center of gravity remains at 22,300 miles. There’s no need for fuel to keep it in orbit. A space elevator would work the same way. The lower end would reach Earth and the other end would stretch out as far as necessary to keep the center of gravity at 22,300 miles. The outer end wouldn’t need to be as long, there could be a counterweight, as long as the center of gravity was at 22,300 miles. So no fuel required to keep it in place. The main obstacles would be finding strong enough material to construct it and performing the actual construction. But at least in theory such an elevator is possible.

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Would be nice to cheaply put stuff in orbit. Why? Everything I need is on earth. Not in space.

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What you are missing is that anything below the geosynchronous orbit distance of 22,236 miles in altitude above Earth’s equator must orbit faster than one geosynchronous orbit. If it does not, gravity will bring it down, that is why the International Space Station, in orbit at an altitude of approximately 225 miles orbits the earth approximately 16 times per day. The Hubble Space Telescope orbits at an altitude of 326 miles and it orbits the Earth about 15 times a day…

What you are missing is Orbital Velocity… A satellite maintains its orbit by balancing two factors: its velocity (the speed it takes to travel in a straight line) and the gravitational pull that Earth has on it. A satellite orbiting closer to the Earth requires more velocity to resist the stronger gravitational pull.

So, contrary to your hypothesis, anything dangling below the space elevator’s station’s center of mass, like that biggo elevator cable, must orbit faster and faster the closer it gets to earth… If it is not orbiting fast enough to maintain a balance between gravity and it velocity, it will fall towards Earth.

So, to keep the elevator cable from being pulled back to Earth, along with the space elevator’s station, the station would need to continuously burn rockets to maintain it orbit else the Earth’s gravity will “reel” in the station like a fish on a line…

Think about it this way. If you tie a ball on a rope and swing it over your head around and around real fast, it stays up high and straight out from your hand. Slow that swing down and the ball drops lower and lower until it hits the ground…

Gravity sucks…

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Sorry but no. The elevator’s center of mass needs to orbit at a specific velocity, a bit less than 2 miles per second in geosynchronous orbit. Anything above or below that just kind of “hangs,” just like you don’t need to constantly push your porch swing up. Here’s a better explanation: Space elevator - Wikipedia

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OK, be that way, here’s the other side of my argument… The Earth is flat, so what’s it going to orbit… L :earth_americas: L . . .

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Good one. :smile:

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Space elevator components don’t need to orbit at different velocities. The Wikipedia article explains it. If there was such a basic and obvious problem you wouldn’t have the effort put into it like it is.

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Does everyone remember the story of “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus?”

It is a line from an editorial by Francis Church. Written in response to a letter by eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon asking whether Santa Claus was real, the editorial was first published in the New York newspaper The Sun on September 21, 1897.

In her letter Virginia wrote that her father had told her “If you see it in The Sun it’s so.” And so, it did appear in the Sun, so it must be so, there must be a Santa… Right?

Well, my premise is based on the same principle… @davepsinbox_157004 references an article in Wikipedia ( Space elevator - Wikipedia ) and @texases fully supports that position…

I would reference Wikipedia itself to judge whether it’s articles hold up to the light of day…

So, “Virginia,” I would say with the same conviction that Virginia’s father spoke…

"If you see it in Wiki, it’s so…

Now, I ask all you “ICEburgers” join me in crying foul the effort to “dinosaur” all petroleum driven vehicles before the electrical infrastructure is in place to even keep us warm during this cold season…

tenor

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It’s a good thing I’m a night owl. Fine. If you won’t accept WikiPedia, here are a few more links you could’ve found for yourself if you tried:

Of course you’ll undoubtedly find reasons to dismiss all of these. FWIW, I first read about space elevators 40+ years ago and while farfetched they’re not unheard of technology.

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That article about not using Wikipedia articles to support other Wikipedia articles has nothing to do with them being unreliable. Instead, it’s about how Wikipedia articles should rely on primary sources. An example of why their articles are reliable. Outside studies have found about the same error rate in their articles as in the online Encyclopedia Brittanica. I have found them accurate in article topics I know a lot about. This is especially true for technical topics, like the space elevator.

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If the Earth was flat, cats would have knocked everything off by now! :laughing:

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Neil even said this isn’t possible without using some like a Nanotube which is several magnitudes lighter then any cable we can make today.

This is most probably a thought experiment. Ideas like this come and go all the time. I personally wouldn’t want to see my tax dollars funding such a project.

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First off, I quote Wikipedia many, many times so I have a great deal of faith in the validity of the articles.

Next, the move to all EV and do away with ICE (to a great extent…) within the next 20 to 30-years is backed by so many “experts” that it is a “forgone conclusion” that it will happen…

Look, the full power of the United States government is driving this (sorry for the pun…) EV movement that it will happen, no matter the consequences… Just expect your children of today will have to sleep worth their children to keep the buggie-man away because their night-light will no longer function since the country will probably Black/Brown out while trying to charge their EVs…

So, considering all this “expert advice” (like the experts who feel the space elevator is viable someday in the future…) have any of these experts also come up with a “working” solution to meet all the electrical requirements? Remember, even the Gas stoves of today are driving the climate change and the government wants all gas stoves also banned. That is all gas stoves except those at the White House…

So what is the solution, more Nuclear Plants? Nope, “Not in my neighborhood…” and where is all the waste going to be stored? More Wind and Solar Farms, nope, same neighbor issues… Even putting the wind farms out in the ocean, way away from the neighborhoods, gets shot down because the fish-huggers are complaining.

All I’m saying is everyone, like you, like me, have opinions about Space Elevators, Wind Farms, Solar Power and more, just like the “experts”, but I think Mary Cooper says it best…

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Has NOTHING to do with climate change, but everything to do with indoor air quality. Children can experience short and long term health effects from breathing the air inside a home that has a gas stove. I grew up on gas stove and oven in a home…HOWEVER…that home was barely insulated. New homes today are several magnitudes more insulated and sealed then homes built even 40 years ago (let alone 100 years like the home I grew up in).

Newer design salt reactors have considerable less nuclear waste.

That’s not true at all. First off you don’t need a solar farm. In fact individual solar home projects are far more efficient. Mine will be installed in a few months (I’m on the list). Individual solar projects is growing leaps and bounds. Based on my experience - I got 4 estimates for my solar project from the dozens of companies in my area. All had the same story. They are booking 5-6 months out. Been that way for years. So doing a quick estimate of a 30 mile radius around where I live - there are about 10,000 new home solar projects every year added. Solar farms are popup up all the time. Many farmers are turning unused portions of their farms into a solar field. Wind isn’t growing as fast, but it’s growing. And expected to grow 10-20 percent before 2030. Solar farms are expected to grow 75% in just 2 years. Airports are getting a lot of interest of solar farms. Indianapolis airport has one of the largest solar farms in the world. A lot of flat, treeless unused land around airports.

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I address kitchen air quality by turning on the stove hood fan to medium high and then lighting the burner. I turn the gas stove off before shutting down the hood fan.

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OK, It looks like I own Neil a most heartfelt apology, it appears that all the talk about Center of Mass was really referring to hanging a Biggo Weight attached to the top of the Space Elevator out about 80,000 miles (a total distance of about 100,000 miles–about half way to the Moon) to counter balance the weight of the cable going to the Geo Station and since the counter weight cable and weight will be so far off the center of mass, it will not have to weigh the millions or even billions of tons needed to counter the weight of the initial cable…

Since this appears to be such a “simple solution” (mega cable capable of supporting billions of tons of stress), why not just make the cable 200,000 miles long and it will be a simple trip to the moon approximately every 25-hours…

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The elevator better move fast. The Earth’s radiation belts are deadly if someone stays in them too long. The rings are wide, 1000-km to 12,000-km and 13,000-km to 60,000-km. Also, how much fuel would it take to put this incredibly long and astonishingly heavy cable in orbit?

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Good Question!!! I do not know, but I’ve read that at the upper end of the scale it can cost up to $30,000 per kilogram (2.2 pounds) to launch a satellite into a Geostationary Equatorial Orbit (GEO).

But I bet if we post this question on Wikipedia, someone will come up with solution…

I say, forget the cable… Just consider the size of the Geo Station and I would imagine it would weight approximately the same as the International Space Station (ISS) which is just under a million pounds and it cost about $150 Billion and that nowhere near as far as the Geo Station needs to be.

Depending on the size of a Geo Syn Satellite, it costs upwards of $500 Million to get a 600-pound Satellite up there. So, let’s do some math… Neil likes Math…

1,000,000 pounds, divided by 600 pounds equals about 1,666 rocket launches… (hey, I do not like that number… it sure looks like the Devil has his hands in it…) L :smile: L . . .

So, if it takes over 1,600 rocket trips and each trip cost approximately $500 Million, then… Well then, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and Mark Zuckerberg, had better break out their check books and be prepared to bounce about $800,000,000,000 (Eight Hundred Trillion Dollars…) worth of checks…

The cost of just lauching the Geo Satellite is; or as Carl Sagan so fondly said, "Eight Hundred Thousand Million Dollars…

And that’s a lot of Billions of Billions…

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Just to clarify, the Indy airport solar farm is the largest airport solar farm in the world, but is nowhere near the largest solar farms in the world. The 70th largest solar farm in the world (France’s Cestas Solar Park) produces 300MW. The Indy airport solar farm produces 17.5MW.